Mounting A Bluto Tapered Front Fork On A Non-Tapered Headtube

I’ve looked at a whole lot of fatbikes for sale in the US and one thing I’ve never seen is a Bluto equipped single speed fatbike. Many newer fatbikes are shipping with a bluto ready tapered headtube which seems to be the emerging standard for fatbike frames. For older frames you might be able to throw a $38 Cane Creek 40\44 bearing cup on the bottom of your non-tapered headtube and then mount a Bluto (or carbon fiber) tapered headtube as a front fork. Lew Podgorski spent a whole lot of time and energy to figure out how to do this so you wouldn’t have to.

A Cane Creek 40 EC44/40 is mounted on the bottom of the headtube which will allow the Deadeye or Deadeye Monster from Bikes Direct to accept a Bluto fork.

The Deadeye Monster is one of my favorite frames to use because it is single speed and take a IGH quite handily and it’s cheap at $399 shipped. The Sun Kiss is a build with a stock 68mm bottom bracket BBS02 and it worked perfectly. This frame is amazing because it can fit a 4.8 Surly Lou on the rear running with a 68mm BB, but the front fork is pretty narrow and will not fit anything wider than about 4.25″. The dropouts are also very narrow at 100mm which makes getting larger diameter tires on and off pretty challenging.

A sweet custom ride with a Bluto full suspension front fork, IGH and BBS02.

The Deadeye Monster frame shipped with a milled out headtube which accepted the Cane Creek 40 EC44/40 adapter handily. Getting the old Headset out can be somewhat challenging without having a special headset cup removal tool which costs money and is not a tool you will use all that often. Lew created a video on making your own headset cup removal tool out of a piece of scrap pipe located here. Lew also made another video on how to make a homemade Headset Cup Press\Install tool located here.

If the bottom of your head tube is already milled out at the factory then you can probably mount a Bluto Fork if you throw on the right Cane Creek Headset Adapter.

There is no guarantee that the newest batch of Deadeye Monsters will have the same Head Tube as the earlier batches, but even if the bottom of the headtube is not milled out properly any respectable bike shop should be able to mill it to fit the adapter cup. Once you mount the new fork you will also have to relace your front wheel with a 15 X 150mm thru axle hub to work properly with the Bluto fork.

The Cane Creek adapter pressed into place.

The Cane Creek adapter can be found on ebay here or just do a search for “Cane Creek 40 EC44/40 Conversion Headset“. It should run less than $40 shipped. For a Bluto fork you are on your own, most of them seem to be going for around $500 and I have yet to see a used one up for sale (nor would I really be interested in a used Bluto fork).

I’ve spent some time looking at carbon forks on alibaba and Bikes Direct and you can get one here for only $199 shipped. If you go with a carbon fork you will need a compression headset and not the headset your cheapo fatbike comes with. I’m not going to say carbon is a good idea, I tend to avoid it most of the time because I beat the holy hell out of my gear. I do have a carbon front fork road bike which has yet to self destruct on me *knock on wood*. If you swap your fork with carbon then it breaks in half and you face-plant on a rock just be aware that I have no money and nothing of value and you’re probably better off suing someone else.

You can have all my electric fat bikes but they probably won’t pay your medical bills.